Friday July 8, 2005

U2’s tour of duty

By ZACK YUSOF

Throughout its career, U2 has made an art form out of playing in huge arenas, raking in millions in the process. ZACK YUSOF looks back at some of the huge world tours that the band has embarked on over the years.

If there’s one band in the world that knows how to stage a live spectacle of epic proportions, it is most definitely Irish rockers U2. For over two decades, the Dublin-based quartet – comprising Bono (vocals), The Edge (guitars), Adam Clayton (bass) and Larry Mullen Jr (drums) – has contrived to tour the world on a scale and grandeur that few other rock bands in the world can match.

Throughout its career U2 has always played massive gigs to huge audiences. With a seemingly endless supply of anthemic songs to turn to, Bono and co were custom-built for playing in stadiums and over the years have grown to become the benchmark to follow.

Going as far back as 1983 – the year the band’s debut album Boy was released – the live album and video Under A Blood Red Sky, still recognised by many fans as one of the best U2 releases, caught the band rocking in Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

Lead singer Bono of Irish rock band U2 performing during a concert at City of Manchester Stadium, England, recently. U2 is currently on its Vertigo 2005 world tour.

When The Joshua Tree went multi-platinum around the world in 1987 after the previous album The Unforgettable Fire had turned the band members into bona fide rockstars and earned them their first US Top 40 hit with Pride (In the name of Love), U2 hit stadiums around the world touring the album.

The Joshua Tree tour became the biggest success of 1987, earning the group the cover of respected publications including Time magazine.

Rattle and Hum, the band’s documentary film about the American leg of the tour, was supported by a double album soundtrack which was divided between live tracks and new recordings highlighting the band’s fascination with American roots music like blues, soul, country and folk.

The Nineties saw U2 criss-crossing the globe on a series of gargantuan world tours. The tour that 1991’s Achtung Baby – the landmark album that transformed the band from righteous stadium rockers into hedonistic, post-modern cyber punks - spawned was a planet-straddling mega tour that lasted three years. With a vast, techno futuristic cityscape set inspired by the sci-fi novels of William Gibson, Zoo TV featured 36 TV screens and gigantic video walls blasting out live new bulletins, satirical loops and messages from the crowd.

The tour also saw Bono devise an alter-ago called the Fly, complete with lizard leathers and wraparound shades, which metamorphosed into the demonic Macphisto as the tour progressed. The charismatic frontman also took to calling politicians and pizza parlours from stage, sucking the real world into the band’s techno-futuristic fantasy world.

Then 1997’s Popmart tour – the band’s epic trek in support of their electronica edged album Pop – was memorable for its sheer size and ambition and picked up from where Zoo TV left off.

Boasting an elaborate stage set up that threatened to push the band over the boundaries of good taste, Popmart was U2’s gigantic salute to trashy consumer culture, whose set-up featured a McDonald’s-esque 500-foot golden arch, massive pixel board video screen spanning the length of the stage and fluorescent 20-foot olive spiked high on a huge toothpick.

Realising that it had pushed the over-the-top mega concert concept to the limit, the band chose to scale down for its next world tours. 2001’s Elevation tour saw the band going back to basics, in keeping with the straightforward guitar rock of 2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind, and abandoning the lavish stage sets and effects for a more stripped down look.

For their current tour in support of its new album How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, U2 has decided to stick with the minimalist feel of the Elevation tour.

But while the stage settings may be less detailed then on previous tours, the band’s Vertigo Tour, which sees the band drawing from its comprehensive back catalogue of hits stretching back to its debut album as well as songs from the new album for its setlist, is nevertheless proving to be a massive hit with concertgoers.

As part of the Tiger Powerhitz presents Tour to Madrid U2 Vertigo contest, courtesy of Tiger Beer, seven lucky fans will get a chance to watch U2 perform in Madrid, Spain, on the European leg of its Vertigo tour on Aug 11.

For contest details, visit www.tigerpowerhitz.com.my/u2 or call the hotline at 03-22622020.

eCentral

U2’s tour of duty